Are Absolute and UB Players Going to Get Payouts?

Tuesday, December 27th, 2011 by Ryan

After Black Friday hit, players were left with their money locked up online, and no place to play online poker. Two of the sites who really took a hurting and left players stranded were UB Poker and Absolute Poker, and it looked as of any chance for players to get money from those sites was pretty much completely gone. Until earlier today then, when it came out that both Absolute and UB Poker players could be repaid by these sites who are going to be liquidated sites soon. While this is excellent news for anyone who had money on the sites, there is a bit of unfortunate news that comes along with it. While the players will be paid, it looks like each player will only get about 20% of the total amount that was remaining in their bankroll.

The exact statement that came out basically stated that these two online poker sites would be paying back players between 15 to 20 cents on the dollar. Absolute and UB are both a part of the CEREUS Network, and were two of the more popular online poker sites in the game. The other two key sites who were hit by Black Friday were Full Tilt Poker and PokerStars, which both ranked in the top two in terms of popularity.

These payouts are definitely not what players were truly hoping for, you can bet that they are more than happy to take anything at this point. This is mainly due to the fact that Full Tilt Poker has left players with absolutely nothing to show for their efforts to this point. The idea behind the liquidation for these two sites, is that they will be attempting to get rid of all of their remaining assets, in hopes to appease the United States Department of Justice. This also means that these two sites are basically throwing in the towel, and that they will be done for good. The traffic on these two sites since Black Friday has basically completely disappeared, and you’ll only find few real money players here and there on the site currently. As far as their employees go, they have laid-off almost their full staff after April, and the remaining staff will simply be helping with the liquidation it seems.

One of the co-founders of Absolute Poker, Brent Beckley, actually pleaded guilty this past week to many different charges that came against him from the US Department of Justice. He ended up accepting a plea deal, but will still receive between 1-15 years in prison. Without taking this deal he could have potentially been looking at more around 30 years though. The other co-founder of the site, Scott Tom’s whereabouts are unknown currently, but that will be something else to keep your eye on as things move forward.

It will also be interesting to see what happens with Full Tilt Poker and the other online poker sites who were shut down after Black Friday, since many stories about online poker in the United States have been coming out recently.